by Cari Z.
“Now you make trouble for my matriarch, trouble for all our people. But soon you will not. The Shamed will do for you, like they will do for the ones you have corrupted, your so-called mothers. They will make sure you are never seen again.” The shuttle wobbled a little, and the Perel muttered, “If I can get this thing there in one piece.”
“Srell,” Jason muttered hoarsely, his throat uncomfortably dry. At least he could speak.
“You are not worthy to even speak the name of my House,” the Perel hissed, and he kicked Jason again, hard enough that his body was driven farther back into the cargo bay of the shuttle. “You are the last leaf to fall, the last bit of rot to be cut away before new, strong leadership can rise in Berenze. My matriarch will have all of your filthy kind sent away.”
The bit about his mothers was bothering Jason. Had Grenn and Giselle been kidnapped too? Had they been taken some other way? Where the hell were they, and more importantly, was Ferran with them? Jason remembered, with chilling clarity, the uncertainty in Seronn’s eyes as he said that he would tell Ferran, if he lived.
If he lived. Fucking hell, Ferran had to live, there was no other option. And Jason had to get back to him as soon as possible.
Managing that would be tricky. He could flex his ankles now, move his aching head from side to side, and clench his fingers a bit, but there was no way Jason would be springing up, overpowering his kidnapper, and turning the shuttle around any time soon.
From the very little he knew of the Shamed—those Perels who had broken the laws of Berenze so badly that they couldn’t be readmitted to the city—their camp was out in the middle of the jungle, far enough from Berenze to be safe, but close enough that they could organize raids on the outskirts. Perhaps an hour or two’s worth of flying in a low-atmosphere shuttle, which this definitely was. Jason didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but he did know that if he were left with a group of lawless, wild Perel in the middle of the wilderness, he would never be seen again.
So, the best option—a hostile takeover of the shuttle—was out of the question. The next-best option was pretty crappy, all things considered, but Jason would do his best to take it. He had to find a way to crash the craft.
The Srell piloting this thing clearly didn’t have a good idea what he was doing. Keeping the shuttle from hitting the treetops took all his concentration, and he certainly didn’t seem to be doing any navigating, which meant that the route had probably been programmed in by someone else. So a little screwing with some of the shuttle’s systems, and the pilot would probably lose control of it.
After that… well, after that, the plan got a little bit fuzzy, but there wasn’t time for a lot of planning under the circumstances. Jason would have to take what he could get. If he could get it.
So… what could a practically paralyzed man do, sabotage-wise, to this shuttle? Interfering with the control systems was out; there was no way Jason could reach them. In fact, touching anything within the Perel’s range of vision was completely out. He’d just get kicked in the head again for his trouble. So what was there to screw with back here? The ventilation system’s main controls were back here, but they were high up on the wall, so that was out. The cooling system’s big, functional units were here as well, but even if Jason managed to get both of them completely open, it wouldn’t have much of an effect when they were flying so slowly.
That left opening the shuttle’s back hatch as the best of the bad deals. There was an emergency switch halfway up the wall at the back, with two small manual turn-locks on either side of it. Jason figured that with some luck, he could about handle that. Then he’d just have to think of a way to make sure he wasn’t sucked out the back of the shuttle.
Getting there wasn’t too difficult. Jason could sort of roll his body, and the grinding from the engine disguised the little noises he made as he flopped toward the back of the shuttle. It took some time, but finally, his torso was beside the rear wall. Getting into a sitting position was difficult, with his limbs still more than half numb. Slowly, he figured out that he could hitch his knees under him enough to use his head to inch up the wall. It hurt to put that kind of strain on his neck, but there was nothing else he could do.
Eventually, Jason’s eyes were level with the emergency switch. Excellent. Now he needed to turn the locks. He looked pleadingly down at his hands, but they were doing all they could to hold him up, his fingers digging in to the metal grate beneath his hips.
So, then. He had a mouth.
It wasn’t as hard as Jason had thought it would be. Hours spent kissing Ferran had apparently done wonders for his lingual flexibility. After he turned the second lock, an alarm started to blare up in the cockpit. He desperately hoped the pilot had no idea what it meant. He was close, so close. One hard push and the emergency switch would open, and so would the shuttle’s hatch.
Jason tangled his legs in some of the loose cords hanging down the walls. He gripped the floor tightly with his hands and wedged himself as far back into the corner of the shuttle as he could. The Srell realized what was going on, letting go of the controls and turning wide, shocked eyes on Jason. “What is this? What have you done?”
Confusion was a fitting epitaph for his captor. Leaning over, Jason jabbed the switch with the point of his chin.
As the door rose, wet air, heat, and rain poured in, and the shuttle lurched into a dive almost instantly. The Srell cried out and turned back to his controls, but it was too late for a poor pilot to recover from the abrupt change in course, and a moment later, the belly of the shuttle hit the first treetop with a hard, metallic shudder. The little ship bounced and lurched and finally tumbled, end over end, into the thick canopy of the jungle of Perelan.
WHEN JASON woke up hours later, everything he saw was blurry, and his ears were ringing. His body was crushed to the back of the pilot’s seat, and he could tell that at least a couple of his ribs were broken after the shuttle’s amazing, suicidal swan dive. On the other hand, he could feel his ribs again. And his arms, his legs, and, unfortunately, his head, which was still pounding with the headache that wouldn’t quit.
He tried to shift, groaned softly at the pain that shot through his spine, and lay there gathering his strength, before trying again. Pain shot like lightning down his back, but Jason could make himself move. When he mustered the energy to turn, he crawled slowly to the cockpit and looked at the remains of the Perel who had taken it upon himself to be Jason’s chauffeur to the Shamed.
The older male of the House of Srell was undeniably dead, and his blood and brains, which were smeared all over the shuttle’s controls, had already begun to smell of rot in this heat. Jason couldn’t bring himself to feel bad.
Groaning, Jason pushed himself into a kneeling position and took a moment to quell the nausea that came with the change. Concussion, he thought to himself. Definitely a concussion. Once the urge to vomit passed, he looked around at the contents of the shuttle and considered his current options. Options, right. Those ranged from bad to awful to fucking terrible every time Jason had to work out a new plan, but it was that or sit here bleeding and feeling sorry for himself.
In some ways, it would make more sense to stay with the wreck. However, if anyone was looking for it, they were probably part of the conspiracy to overthrow Grenn, which meant that they were nothing like friendly. Plus, the shattered shuttle wouldn’t offer that much more protection against the elements than the open jungle right now.
So, Jason had to leave. First, he had to figure out whether or not he actually could leave. Apart from the ribs, his back, and the continual throbbing of his head, Jason actually felt like he could get around if he had to. Since he had to. His feet were still clad in the flat-soled slippers that passed for shoes here, but his legs seemed to work. He was incredibly lucky to come out of the crash this whole, and he partially attributed it to the fact that his body had been totally relaxed when they made impact, not clenched and tensing against the fall. Yes, he had broken ribs, but
he didn’t have a broken neck.
What could he take with him? Jason very slowly turned his aching head in a semicircle, looking at what he had. Apart from the webbing on the walls and the body broken like a cheap plastic doll in the front, there didn’t seem to be anything here: not an emergency kit, not even a bottle of water. He swore loudly in his mind, cursing the people who had taken him for not being more prepared, even though he recognized that their folly was his means of escape.
Fine. He would just have to make do with what he could find outside.
The only thing he took with him was the navigation system. It was a detachable unit, about the size of the palm of his hand, and apart from the leads still sparking a little with electricity, it didn’t look too bad. Jason would need that when he was found. If his supposition that they’d been on a preprogrammed route was right, then this little box would tell whoever found him how to find the Shamed. And maybe Ferran, and Jason’s adopted mothers as well, if all of them were still alive.
Which they were. Of course they were. Jason would know, somehow, if Ferran were dead. It was possible he hadn’t even been involved in whatever had happened at Giselle’s home. Jason didn’t have enough information to know one way or the other, and at the moment, he’d much rather deal with the uncertainty than give in to the hysterical fear lurking with the rest of the firestorm of his emotions, barely held at bay by Jason’s logical mind.
Moving his shoulder enough to get one hand behind his back was harder than Jason thought it should be, but he managed. He crawled forward to the edge of the gaping hatch and then out of the shuttle.
Now he just had to pick a direction. Jason felt like kicking himself for not getting instruction on wilderness survival while he was being educated in everything else about Perelan, but he shelved the self-recrimination with his other useless emotions and looked up at the trees. A clear path of destruction where the shuttle had come sloping drunkenly out of the sky stretched from the crash site toward Berenze. Once he got back, he could figure out how to go after the Shamed. He resolutely closed himself off to all the potentially bad scenarios that wanted to beat his mind into submission and started to walk.
His throat and eyes were burning after half an hour. It was more than the burn Jason was used to, and after a moment of wracking his battered brain, he remembered why. It had been over a day since he’d last taken the prophylactic against the acidic effects of the environment, and he knew his contacts were practically useless now. He didn’t have any tablets or sprays on him, and there was no way he was going to be finding any. Jason swallowed experimentally, forcing the dregs of his saliva over his parched throat. He would have to drink as soon as he could find water, and that was going to hurt too.
Jason mentally shrugged to himself. He could handle the pain if he had to. Since he had to. He put one foot in front of the other and walked slowly on, slipping every now and then on the moss-covered forest floor. No light filtered through the trees, not even the dim glow that passed for daylight here on Perelan, and the darkness took on a new sort of life here beneath the jungle canopy. The effect was a little like what the Perel had tried to recreate in Berenze, but their imitation was nowhere near as vivid as the original.
Everything glowed with varying levels of brightness, color, and crispness of outline. Jason could see the light move, twisting down stalks and dripping off leaves, all of the water infused with fungal spores. He had no idea what the effect of drinking that would be, but it looked like he was going to find out. Jason tipped the edge of a broad, curved leaf into his mouth and swallowed what ran off, ignoring the slimy texture as it slipped down his throat. God, it hurt going down. That was enough for now, that had to be enough. He smacked his chapped lips together distastefully and wondered whether his mouth was glowing now too.
Jason kept going, forcing his disobedient feet to keep moving and his thick, laboring lungs to keep breathing. The pain in his ribs stabbed him with every inhalation, but after a while the sensation became almost nice, a safe and reliable way to distract himself from the reality of his situation. If he let the few free tendrils of consciousness that weren’t motivating him to move start thinking about all the unknowns, well… something undignified would occur. Like him falling down, beating his fists on the ground, and screaming like a child.
The image brought a brief smile to Jason’s face. Apparently some urges you never outgrew.
Chapter Seventeen
THE FIRST two days were okay. Not wonderful, but Jason managed them all right. He moved onward, climbing painfully over enormous tree roots, slipping across spongy, damp moss, and simply living in the damp fog that was the unadulterated environment of Perelan. He drank as little as he could get away with, because every sip was like liquid fire, and he slept under broad leaves and shrank back into the tightest spaces he could find whenever he heard something else moving in the jungle. Jason didn’t know all the kinds of animals this place housed or how many of them were dangerous, and now wasn’t the time to play zoologist.
Sometimes it was hard for him to tell whether he was awake or dreaming, because no matter what, he felt threatened, menaced on all sides by things that were just outside of his range of vision. As soon as Jason’s eyes closed, the nightmares began—many of them centered around Ferran, and all of them leaving him gasping with pain and fear by the time they ran their course.
He was hungry, extremely hungry, but he didn’t trust himself to keep anything down, so he didn’t eat.
He had to be making progress, getting closer to Berenze. Two days on foot versus a few hours in a shuttle had to equate before too long, didn’t they? The storm of his emotions swung, punch-drunk, at his lips. It shrieked for him to cry out with it, but Jason still resisted. It was fine. He was fine. He would make it.
On the morning of the third day, Jason couldn’t open his eyes. They were crusted together with thick, sticky secretions, and once he did get them open, the lids scraping across his acid-suffused contacts like steel wool, he regretted it almost instantly. Something new and warm and wet collected in the corners, and after swiping at it with his hands and looking close, he could see that it was blood.
There was blood in his spittle when he tried to clear his throat—more like hacking up a lung than a simple cough. Jason had seen the effects of unprotected mining on workers who would eventually receive Regen treatment, and the clots of sticky blood pooling on the ground once he was done coughing reminded him of it. He saw blood in his urine as well, although at that point, Jason couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining things.
Everything felt raw and hideous today, and he didn’t know if he could handle the pain. The prophylactic was definitely out of his system, and this planet was going to dissolve him where he stood if he didn’t get help soon.
There was no help, though. There was nothing, just heat and wet, the shrill cry of hunting birds in the night, the interminable patter of rain, and the squishing sound of Jason’s own two feet against the ground as he moved doggedly forward. He had picked a direction, and even if he’d gotten turned around somehow—which, given the poor state of his vision, was definitely possible—he had to keep going. There wasn’t any other logical choice at this point.
Indifferent insects ran over Jason’s slow feet as he moved, only bothering to stop when he left them a bloody offering—when the congestion in his chest was just too much and he had to cough and cough and cough to bring it up. The only moving things Jason had really seen in this jungle were insects, which was comforting in an abstract kind of way. Insects, he could deal with. Much bigger than that and he’d be out of his league.
He walked on, breathing until he choked, letting the thinnest slits of eye possible peek out from under their lids to keep the burning down, and cradling his aching chest with his arms. Moving, bit by bit. It was bearable. It was an accomplishment. It was what he had to do.
By night, the rainfall was heavy, and Jason knew he had to stop. He also knew that if he stopped now, the odds of gettin
g started again lessened with every hour. Three days was a long time without food. A long time to be broken inside. He was so tired and, he admitted to himself, so scared. He was afraid his body was going to give out, afraid his mind would finally snap, afraid he was lost.
Afraid for his husband. Jason leaned hard against the base of a tremendous tree trunk, his battered hands clinging to the bark for support as his remaining strength just went out of him. God, he was so worried about Ferran it made him breathless, leaving white spots of panic floating across his vision whenever the thought fluttered at the edges of his mind. For once, he was so desperate that he actually wished for a deity to pray to—for the word God to mean something to him beyond its immortal status as the catchall epithet of so many human languages.
The back of his hand tickled suddenly, and Jason jerked himself away from the tree and forced his eyes open to look at what was investigating him. He expected a bark beetle—he had seen hundreds of small brown ones during his long march. What he hadn’t expected was a brilliant blue beetle larger than his head, using its mandibles to scrape the tree’s spongy, glowing bark into its mouth.
“Oh,” Jason whispered—the first time he’d actually spoken in days. He didn’t recognize that raw sound as his voice, but it didn’t matter. This beetle was one of the ones he’d seen at the factory, the specially modified ones. That meant…. That meant he had to be close. Didn’t it? What was the effective range of these beetles? Jason didn’t know, but this one didn’t look to be a fast mover by any means, and it had to go out and come back within the space of one night. Jason was pretty sure he could still keep pace with a beetle.
The word providence floated across his mind, and Jason was seized by the hysterical urge to start laughing, but he restrained himself. Instead, he waited patiently for the beetle to finish collecting bark and fungus—perhaps a half an hour—and then watched it begin to bumble away. He staggered after it, opening first one eye and then the other, trading off the painful blur that remained of his vision.